United World Colleges

I found it wonderful.

I still remember when I went to school in Italy at a United World College.

Yay, United World Colleges.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I wonder if we could like zoom in a little bit to some specific kind of student examples.

We know about a course that you were involved with at UWC, a Be the Change course, and then also your Changemaker Education at Frankfurt International School.

So could you tell us a little bit about like the student experience in your world?

Absolutely.

So yeah, thank you.

Hey Mike, before I jump into mine, I wanted to just piggyback on what you were just talking about.

So from a practical perspective, can you walk me through a couple of the opportunities that students would have had at UWC, at FIS, at SGI, wherever, but from a curricular standpoint? Because for me, one of the really big highlights of your work has been your ability, or not your ability, but your community's ability uh to bring that work into the curricular space versus leaving it as an extracurricular or club or something like that so if you don't mind maybe sharing a couple examples for teachers or coordinators or just educators in general to to consider i guess as they think about their own context as well that would be super helpful Sure, and there are

so many examples of that work going on.

Okay.

And I saw this newspaper article one time about United World Colleges and basically Nelson Mandela was the patron of this school and the Norwegian queen was there visiting and it's in this kind of castle in Wales and they have a scholarship-based program with people coming in from all over the world.

including Nigeria, all over Africa, Asia, everywhere.

We were 82 nations.

So let's talk about Before We Forget.

So this is, uh, the story of, um, an Argentinian, a middle class, working class Argentinian boy who is accepted into, uh, United World College in Duino in Italy and makes the trek.

And his friend, who happens to be your friend and the, uh, co-director, I believe, of the film and the editor, makes a trip to visit him, uh, Mateus, who is really Juan Pablo, United World College, and finds that his friend from Argentina has really immersed himself in this culture and feels a lot safer and more comfortable being himself in a new habitat.

The film then, you know, fast-forward, is the story of you in mi- in early midlife as a filmmaker making a film with your be- your, your best friend, your close friend who had ma- ha-had made the trek to, to Italy, uh, when you were teenagers.

And it's the story of a l- you know, a love you had 25 years earlier that you're now trying to capture on film, and you're struggling with it.

And number two is a, a quote from the film, uh, Before We Forget, which I just highly recommend you, you, uh, rent it on, uh, October 20th and beyond in the United States, um, when it is finally live.

"Memory is sneaky.

It's inaccurate." It's a beautiful scene near the end of the film in which Juan Pablo, playing himself as the character Mateus, and his best friend from high school, from, from, uh, United World College, are reunited for the first time, and they have gone very different paths.

So to set the scene, both of my brothers got accepted into these very prestigious schools.

United World College, they're called, and there's kids from all over the world.

I didn't have the grades to even apply.

So I went to LCBI in Outlook, Saskatchewan.

Uh, moved to Singapore when I was two, and was raised there until my teenage years.

And, and part of my kind of really pivotal time in Singapore, aside from being where I was, immersed in this really incredible multicultural society, is, um, I attended United World College Dover Campus for my high school years.

So whilst I was there, I was immersed in the learning program, which of course has some really strong values around peace and a sustainable future.

Um, I didn't realize at the time quite how significant that education was and that immersion was, but now I look back, I say literally the UWC mission is written into my DNA.

I have an, a family of teachers, literally dozens [laughs] and dozens of teachers in my family.

I resisted it for a while, and then, um, and then followed the very strong calling to go into education.

So pretty shortly after doing that, I returned back to United World College Dover Campus as a teacher.

So I got to retrace my steps and, um, work on the other side of the incredible learning program and get to support learners and do all sorts of amazing things in relation to the service program, the community program, um, and also outdoor education, which felt, um, very important to me as well.

It was a chance application to a scholarship, and then that worked out and I had a, an amazing time.

In the US, I went to a place which is called the United World College, which is part of a school system around the world.

This one particular one was in the US, is in the US, and still to this day have a great network of classmates.

In fact, we just celebrated our fortieth anniversary from graduating that school.

Oh, absolutely, yes.

I've never heard of it.

Yeah, it's called United World Colleges.

There was definitely culture shock because coming out of then eighty-s-four communist Eastern Bloc Bulgaria and landing on a very posh private small school was certainly a bit of a culture shock.